After the angry outburst of the president of a major employers’ union, President Tebboune suspended a structure responsible for imposing heavy fines on unscrupulous importers.
“I’m going to crush you!” I’m going to take off your pants on the Place des Martyrs! » Broadcast on social networks on September 12, the angry audio message from Saïda Neghza, president of the General Confederation of Algerian Enterprises (CGEA), addressed to the director of the official press agency, APS, sparked bursts of laughter and amazement in Algeria.
The head of the employers’ organization was reacting to an attack published on September 10 by the state media, in which she is presented as the spokesperson for “the old order, those of an issaba (gang in Arabic, a term which designates the oligarchs linked to ex-president Abdelaziz Bouteflika) whose favorite sport was not the practice of golf, but embezzlement of the people’s money. » The official agency drove the point home by describing Saïda Neghza as a person of “little stature” with a “penchant for everything foreign and international”.
In a country marked by a virtual extinction of public life, the exchange of politeness is all the more surprising as it stems from direct criticism of the regime. Before being vilified by the official press agency, the president of the CGEA sent, on September 7, a letter to President Abdelmadjid Tebboune on the “socio-economic situation of the country” weighed down, according to her, ” by a slump” and a “business climate suffering from a lack of confidence and an almost general escalation of prices”.
In her missive, Saïda Neghza claims, above all, to echo businessmen who complain “of suffering fines inflicted by a committee made up of five ministers, without even having the right to access their files, fines which for some exceed the amount of the assets of their companies and which they will not be able to pay.” Words that confirm what certain influencers established abroad have already leaked on social networks: the existence of an interministerial commission responsible for tough tax adjustments, outside the usual legal framework.
” Method of working “
The committee in question, which began operating in May, imposed particularly heavy fines on importers accused of over-invoicing during the decade 2009-2019. Foreign companies were also allegedly subject to this hounding, such that a letter was sent to European businessmen by an official of the European Union (EU) delegation asking them not to sign anything in case they would be summoned.
“When a businessman is summoned before a committee of which the Minister of Justice is a member, he finds himself disarmed and without any protection,” points out Saïda Neghza in her letter, who pleads for a “conversion of the fines required, into an obligation to launch productive investment projects. The manager, a keen expert on the workings of Algerian power, took care to seek shelter abroad before sending her letter.
Because it addressed one of the priority areas of President Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s action, the missive received a wide response on social networks – the only places for discussions still relatively open. Elected with a record abstention rate and contested by the popular Hirak movement, the Algerian president made the recovery of “funds and assets looted inside the country and abroad” a priority. Until proclaiming, in May, having got their hands on 22 billion dollars (18.7 billion euros).
Many saw the affair as an expression of clan struggles within the regime. But, despite the press agency’s charge against her, Saïda Neghza was able to see, from her circumstantial exile, that her exit had an effect. On September 13, President Tebboune received the leadership of the Algerian Economic Renewal Council (CREA), an employers’ organization competing with the CGEA. Its president, Kamel Moula, was responsible for announcing that the interministerial committee that distributes tax adjustments has been frozen by the head of state: “Time to review its working method.”
